Sexton is a Christian conservative who was working at the time for an organization called Reasons to Believe, which strives, in part, to reconcile scientific discovery and theory with the apparent whoppers told in the Bible.

Sexton is a poet I return to repeatedly, ever since a college dorm roommate (who was taking a poetry class) showed me the poem “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward” and pointed out these lines that describe the speaker holding a newborn: